This invention relates to methods for searching online (such as through the Internet) or offline for information of interest to a user of a device, particularly devices such as camera cell phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants). Current methods proposed for searching the Internet typically involve the searcher manually inputting search terms or having machine-readable codes provide a simple URL or a paucity of pre-determined search terms or providing a search based on an image of a logo, etc.
These possibilities are quite limited on a number of counts. The user—the one who actually wants the search—must either manually input search terms, a cumbersome task on mobile devices, or resign themselves to a predetermined search (i.e., the search is essentially shaped by someone else, not the person who actually wants the search). Furthermore, these current proposals would only provide information to the user by going off to the Internet to find that information. This requirement imposes an unwanted time lag and can provide information only if the device is then capable of establishing an online connection, an oftentimes questionable assumption depending on coverage in the user's particular location at that time. The invention overcomes these and other problems.
The invention generally relates to a method where human-understandable information such as text, graphics, audio and video is digitally encoded into a barcode or other machine-readable code, and that machine-readable code is printed or displayed through a television, computer or other electronic display. A user of a device, integrated or coupled with an imager (e.g., a camera cell phone), images the machine-readable code, the device decodes the image of the machine-readable code, and the contents are displayed or otherwise performed (e.g., audio is played) on the device. The method generally further provides that the human-understandable contents contained in the machine-readable code be used, by itself or with further user input or selection, as the basis for a search of related information. This search could be performed on the device itself or by transmitting the human-understandable information (as may or may not be modified by user input or selection) to a server so that an external source, such as the Internet, could be searched for related information.
In order to minimize the manual input required by a user, the invention further provides a method of navigation and input. This method generally uses the same machine-readable code used to encode human-understandable information to be displayed on the device (although the method is not so limited to the use of that machine-readable code). The method uses that code not (or not necessarily) for the contents of the code but as a guiding system. The method correlates the location of the image of that code in the sensor of the device's imager to a location indicator on the display of the device. That location indicator can then be used to select a component of that display for purposes of using such selected component as one of perhaps many search terms.